RFC: Hunting Exploits

[NeoBasilisk]

If you are referring to things like trapping animals, using terrain to your advantage, shooting from boats, and using cliffs strategically as "exploits"...

You do realize these were all often-used tactics in the early days of human hunting?

If not, what are these hunting exploits you refer to?

I too play this game for its realistic combat system

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

My perspective on this starts with animals not aggroing when you attack them, with possible exceptions like Bear, Moose, and possibly Lynx. Instead, they should run like a motherfucker, busting the shit out of anything between them and their path of escape that isn't a palisade.

They should actively avoid palisades.

Wounding an animal should continue to present blood trail as it does, but the animal needs to slow and weaken more than it does so that persistence hunting becomes a viable option, along with tracking them.

Animals that cannot path to the thing they're aggro'd against should de-aggro and flee, once again destroying everything in their path (Or just 'jumping' obstacles like fencepost walls, build signs, other animals, in the case of deer.)

Make each of the animals have different terrain navigation options... Lynx may very well be able to scale a cliff while fleeing, foxes and badgers could 'go to ground' in burrows that disappear when they die or despawn. Deer are fleet of foot and give no shits about most terrain barriers. About those burrows? Make digging them up potentially result in multiple angry/fleeing creatures, so that trying to uproot them could get you in a world of shit, or make you lose track of the one that you previously hurt.

Maybe have burrows occasionally produce some nice little curio or some such for early game reward in spite of not being able to catch the animal you were after.

Let.
Bears.
Swim.
And faster than rowboats.


The trick is providing an engaging and active hunting experience and ways to make hunting down a bleeding animal viable while making it impossible to cheese them because they simply won't stick around for that shit.

Let animals enter caves and burrows to follow your dumb ass (Badgers/foxes/bears) or run the fuck away if you break aggro by entering a cave.

Give the game game, and make them smarter.

Also, neutral animals should flee when it senses a player nearby just like animals capable of aggro can aggress when a player is nearby.

Just some random thoughts.

[Vigilance]

My perspective on this starts with animals not aggroing when you attack them, with possible exceptions like Bear, Moose, and possibly Lynx. Instead, they should run like a motherfucker, busting the shit out of anything between them and their path of escape that isn't a palisade.

you already lost me

why do you actively want the game to become worse?

[Avu]

It's been almost 10 years since animals flee like they have a fusion reactor in their but. In this time you haven't implemented trap hunting, you haven't implemented dog hunting, bow+arrow hunting is shit and just wastes their quality and what you want to remove is the cheese? I have to cheese way past being able to face tank some bitch animals because they torpedo at the speed of light. Sure make 10-20% flee but god damn it don't make them all flee. If you insist on keeping the fleeing make them fucking bleed and DIE if you hike a bit. An animal that runs unless you;re on a horse or something and even then it's pretty much fuck it I'll find another one and cheese it better if I can't do enough damage to avoid the fleeing phase. So down with fleeing, don't let it reach 10 years.

I don't really mind the cheese.

[Sarge]

It's been almost 10 years since animals flee like they have a fusion reactor in their but. In this time you haven't implemented trap hunting, you haven't implemented dog hunting, bow+arrow hunting is shit and just wastes their quality and what you want to remove is the cheese? I have to cheese way past being able to face tank some bitch animals because they torpedo at the speed of light. Sure make 10-20% flee but god damn it don't make them all flee. If you insist on keeping the fleeing make them fucking bleed and DIE if you hike a bit. An animal that runs unless you;re on a horse or something and even then it's pretty much fuck it I'll find another one and cheese it better if I can't do enough damage to avoid the fleeing phase. So down with fleeing, don't let it reach 10 years.

I don't really mind the cheese.

Please, it's on the road map.

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

why do you actively want the game to become worse?

Our principles of what defines a good game simply vary. I don't want the game to become worse, I want persistence hunting to be the standard. Do you want to slow things down? Break cheesing? You have to make hunting like hunting. I suspect you're one of those who would like it to stay the same, meaning there's precious little constructive input you can provide to this conversation. The topic is how to break cheesing, not how to maintain it.

[Kaios]

It's been almost 10 years since animals flee like they have a fusion reactor in their but. In this time you haven't implemented trap hunting, you haven't implemented dog hunting, bow+arrow hunting is shit and just wastes their quality and what you want to remove is the cheese? I have to cheese way past being able to face tank some bitch animals because they torpedo at the speed of light. Sure make 10-20% flee but god damn it don't make them all flee. If you insist on keeping the fleeing make them fucking bleed and DIE if you hike a bit. An animal that runs unless you;re on a horse or something and even then it's pretty much fuck it I'll find another one and cheese it better if I can't do enough damage to avoid the fleeing phase. So down with fleeing, don't let it reach 10 years.

I don't really mind the cheese.

Yeah I agree with this, most of my "cheesing" is a result of the animal being annoying to catch rather than being difficult to fight. If you resolved this issue and then kept the quality degradation from arrows it would likely be a lot better. As well, you could add further degradation effects if the animal ends up being hit too many times with both ranged or melee attacks, the reasoning being that your damage is too low due to the fact that you haven't become strong enough to be fighting that particular mob at that time. This effect would eventually be negated by becoming strong enough to finish creatures without crossing a certain hit number threshold.

I feel like that could resolve much of the problem actually, not so much the cheesing itself but the advantageous nature of it. Sure you can get a mammoth stuck somewhere and hit it 50-100 times but if the end result is a quality 0 mammoth that offers nothing else like learning points upon death that does end up being a waste of effort for the player and might deter them from such behaviour in the future. If you make it more difficult to unintentionally break aggro with a mob then you could also add some sort of negative result in terms of quality impact or something else entirely if aggro is intentionally broken during some cheesing method.

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

. As well, you could add further degradation effects if the animal ends up being hit too many times with both ranged or melee attacks, the reasoning being that your damage is too low due to the fact that you haven't become strong enough to be fighting that particular mob at that time

There is the nugget of a good idea here.

[Sarge]

. As well, you could add further degradation effects if the animal ends up being hit too many times with both ranged or melee attacks, the reasoning being that your damage is too low due to the fact that you haven't become strong enough to be fighting that particular mob at that time

There is the nugget of a good idea here.

I completely agree, it's simple, it's clean and it's effective. It might not address risk for all cheesing scenarios such as hitting between twitching over and through shallows/cliffs/palisades, but it's a great start. Change it so that there is no twitching or twitching predictability and you should have it solved entirely.

Don't forget to change fleeing though, 'cause ffs already.

[IronHorde]

Is it an intended mechanic to damage an animal to the point of it running and it escapes your render and vision that once you reacquire the animal it always seem to be a fresh one that turns and attacks? This isn't just hurr durr fresh animal.
do you only damage it partial and it just resets if it escapes combat even one hit from death?

I've noticed this multiple times, recently with a bear i had flee'ing which "bearly" escaped my vision and when i drank and ran again - it was a fresh bear with no damage, resulting in my ko.
No it wasn't the "enrage mode" - it is a fresh animal that is not hurt. Someone else has seen this right? It happens ALOT while hunting.
Almost as if by jorb design.